GAD! Zine

      Jesse Norris ’ latest (and strongest) from solo project Phantom Eye is a near-perfect blend of post-punky romanticism and basement diary. Album opener “The Horns In Your Heart May Stop You” immediately evokes the sonics of Joy Division and early New Order , but is craftily adapted to soundtrack the inner dramas and traumas of the artist. “Girl (2025 Version)” has the unenviable task of following "THIYHMSY" but it  kills at that assignment. It has just as much throb as its 2024 predecessor but with more nuance. And feeling. All songs here offer the listener varying degrees of wistful melancholia. Pieces like “Drowned Out” kinda lead one to hear the last 30-plus years of the Cure if it had been recorded in the first 10 (imaginary) years. Or vice versa? For Mr. Norris (who wrote and produced and played all the instruments), For Want Of is the culmination of 5 years of personal struggle, growth, and just working through shit. Kinda mad at myself for mentionin...

[Editor's Note: I wrote two reviews for one album (this time on purpose!). The first is my REAL review. The second is a "funny" one I wrote to show members of the band as a goof.] TOWU - Hometown R.I.P., TOWU (That's short for "Rest In Peace, The Old World Underground). Gadsden's own indie-proto-post-punky band of miscreants are calling it quits, or more like moving on to other racket(s). But first they have some last minute business to attend to, that being Hometown. And what a way to wrap it up! The record opens with "Broad", with its deceptive as hell intro. Jesse Norris is frantic and rambling and probably the most confident in his voice I've ever heard. I've previously complimented their use of saxophone. It doesn't just honk in Faux-No-Wave and it doesn't cheese up everything. Dude's a proper artist. The music is scatterbrained (in a good way). Jumping from style to style a million times in a tune is a trap that...

  Live documentation of what must've been an intense performance. Corinna Cybele conducts soundscapes that are equal parts beauty and violence. Raw and primal and dangerous and all-encompassing. I dig it. -Harmless Subhymnal on Bandcamp Subhymnal on Facebook This review originally appeared in GAD! Zine issue 27

* Disclaimer: I do have a cameo on this album. But it is minimal and has no effect on the music (which is why they let me do it!)* Cleveland Ohio's Altered Paradox offers sludgey distorted metal awash in atmospheric fuzz. An abandoned waste barrel of screechy whispered commentary and yowelled what-the-fuckisms. It's like you're trapped in a dark chamber and you hear beating on the other side of the wall. Like they're trying to get out. But you're in and they're out. But your in is their out. I'm not metal-ly enough to go too deep into histrionics or genre-gazing, but I'm hardly inexperienced with such sounds. I know heavy shit when I hear it. Altered Paradox is HEAVY. And they're really damned good.  Altered Paradox is not here to reinvent the (metal) wheel, but you could hardly accuse them of patching an old tire. More like they wanna try every shape that wheel can be banged and dented into. They will ride on those obtuse angles and relish every bum...

                                                                             (Flyer art by Patrick Quintanilla)     Last night's Punk Rock Art Show was super fun! It was our first time playing True Story  Brewing Company and I gotta say it was very cool. The staff were nice. The audience was that   great combination of friendly and rowdy. FUN FUN FUN. Lot's of killer art was there to look at and purchase. We missed Toxic Weasel cuz we're divas and always show up late. I'll be rockin' their sweet button and sticker like a fat spiky billboard for the next year to make up for it. We did catch The Killakee House and they were badass! Glad I finally got to experience them! They punk and they rawk. Our buddies Boss Rush sounded great from outside (we were getting our l...

    Been a while since "we" posted anything here. And that was just sharing pages of an old issue of the GAD! print zine. This site has never lived up to even its meager potential. It's funny that, when I started the site, I was worried that it would render that zine obsolete. Not quite! The reviews, interviews, and articles have been sparse and most of them appeared in the zine in some form. Score 1 for physical media! Hell, at one point, we lost our address cuz the dude that was paying for it before didn't and I wasn't paying attention. Caught it too late! That's why all our old links on social media go nowhere. LAME! When I had to come up with a new one, I decided to go with punkrockalabama.com. Punk Rock, Alabama is, in theory, the name up my as yet unfinished book on punk rock in..... Alabama! I've listed too many excuses too many times for my creative output's decline in the last 2 or 3 years.     The thing is, the entire point of the...